The cult of kubandwa

In Rwandan Traditional Religion dead parents through spirits intervene in protecting their progeny against evils and bad spirits.³⁴⁶ These spirits, called Imandwa are creatures of God and they are representatives of all the races of Rwanda their chief leader is called “Ryangombe.”³⁴⁷ His is honored in the cult of kubandwa. “The cult of kubandwa started in the second half of the 15th century during the reign of the King Ruganzu Ndori II “from the clan of Abanyiginya”³⁴⁸ that the cult of kubandwa was introduced in Rwanda by Ryangombe; he is qualified as the powerful spirit and the king of imandwa (spirits). He probably originated from Gitara in Bunyoro district of Uganda.”³⁴⁹ The effect of kubandwa is to give to the adept an insurance of individual salute. The salvation has to be extended here in living earth, in a secular sense; it will help in a positive way against the pains of the present life.³⁵⁰ “In honoring Ryangombe, you protect yourself against abazimu.”³⁵¹

Human being is oriented in search of happiness in avoiding the pain. This is the finality of different Rwandan rituals. The fundamental motive is to find a solution to his problems of life.

“These rites are considered as techniques which can produce an effect or to remove a danger.”³⁵² That is why evangelical churches which call people for miracles are gaining many members because of their techniques of healing and doing miracles. Rwandans are often attracted enthusiastically by these magical operations.

healers, <http://afrokwetu.blogspot.com/2012/12/waganga-and-sangoma-fake-traditional.html>, 17th July 2014.

346 Aloys Bigirumwami, Ibid, p.72.

347 Alexandre Arnoux, Ibid, p.64.

348 Pauwels M., Ibid, p.115.

349 La formation du Rwanda à partir du 15ème siècle, book published by the Museum of Nyanza, Ibid, p.15.

350 Aloys Bigirumwami, Ibid, p.136.

351 Gérard Van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.20.

352 Aloys Bigirumwami, Ibid, p.69

The first missionaries did not understand or learned about Traditional Religion, to them at their arriving, Africa was a dark continent filled with savages who had no history, no past, no culture and therefore no religion.³⁵³ The Traditional Religion was called animism, paganism, idolatry;

and this provoked a shame among Africans. Unfortunately today again, Evangelical Churches are calling Christians to burn instruments of traditional religion such as amulets, drums used, and other objects.

For Christian churches, mortal sins are: “joining the pagans in idol worship, invoking the spirits, sacrifices, keeping amulets and believing in them as God, dealing with charms, celebrating funeral rites in a pagan way or participating in such rites.”³⁵⁴ Traditional Religion is a culture.

To understand the culture you need the traditional religion. “Most of early missionaries in Africa presented traditional religion and culture in a negative light. The result is that there are Africans today who still find nothing good in African traditional religion and culture”.³⁵⁵

Missionaries fought actively against Traditional Religion; in the period of Ernest Von der Heyden (1921-1933) at “Kirinda”³⁵⁶ in Rwanda, the disciplinary measures for all those practicing Traditional Religion was to be beaten with a stick publicly or to be detained temporarily in the tower of the temple. In the period of Marc Huart (1933-1952), they were excluded to the Holy Communion; it meant exclusion to the Christian community. ³⁵⁷ People refused to abandon their traditional religion, many preferring to mix it with Christianity. During the day when they were interacting with missionaries and other church members they were Christians. But after leaving the church they practiced their old habits of culture, for example in consulting witchcraft.

Today African Traditional Religion is still practiced by millions of Africans in our time and it is therefore a contemporary reality which exists objectively and in fact. It connects the present

353 Chinwe M.A. Nwoye, Continuing the conversation on the notion of mission as reconciliation : a critical review of Catholic Church’s dialogue with African indigenous religion, <www.saintleo.edu/Documents.ashx?id=897>, 24th September 2011, p.3.

354 Ibid, p.8 355 Ibid, p.17

356 First missionary site of the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda, created in 1907 by missionaries from Bethel in Germany.

357 Gerard Van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.169.

with infinite time.³⁵⁸ That is why even when people talk about the Church, the discussion is typically related only to the spiritual issues and all other events and everyday happening are given spiritual meaning and importance only. This can be attributed to the overwhelming traditional perception in Africa where all natural events are viewed as ordered by the spirits, gods, and ancestors.³⁵⁹ Today in all Protestant Churches where prayer is often spontaneous, people respond to all prayers which put down, exclude, fight, and ban bad spirits in the name of Jesus.

The latest signs of this endurance of conviction by the people in the elements and rituals of African Traditional Religion is the now Africa Magic movies (channel of DSTV), particularly those authored and popularized by Nigerian actors, and those from Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa.³⁶⁰ Those movies show how the natural magic and the fear of spirits are present in African daily life; also the role of elders and ancestors is very important and respected.

According to the Nigerian Chidi Denis Isizoh:

Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician he takes it to the house of parliament. Although many African languages do not have a word for religion as such, it nevertheless accompanies the individual from long before his birth to long after his physical death.³⁶¹

In Traditional Religion “spirits are more powerful than men. They can move freely between the highest realms where God is, in his service, but are also at the service of human beings in their

358 Chris Ampadu, quoted Opoku 78,9 in Correlation between African traditional religions and the problems of African societies today, <http://www.wciu.edu/docs/general/ampadu_article.pdf>, 28th November 2012 359 Ibid.

360 Chimwe Nwoye, Dominance of the trappings of African traditional religion in Africa Magic movie; a challenge for educating the Christian youth, <www.saintleo.edu/Documents.ashx?id=534>, 30th August 2011, p.46.

361 Chidi D. Isizoh, Christian motivation for dialogue with followers of African Traditional Religion, <http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/motivation.html>, 15th August 2011. quoted African Religions and Philosophy, 2.The same idea is expressed by many African scholars some of whom we mention as example:

Parrinder E.G., West African Religion, London, 1961; Idowu E.B., Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, London, 1962; Awolalu J.O., West African Traditional Religion, Ibadan, 1979.

search to link with God. Evil spirits seem to come from wicked living people, from dead people, from magic practices and witchcraft, or from sorcerers”.³⁶² By singing, sacrificing animals, and manipulating objects, witches and sorcerers are to communicate with the invisible world of spirits. That is why “people can consult them to receive messages from God, send their prayers to God and fight against evil”³⁶³ In traditional conception, the universe is composed by two interactive spheres, the sphere of the visible and the sphere of the invisible world. From the sky, Imana has a hand-stake on the inferior layers of the universe: the earth and the basement. The earth is the home of the living. Below the earth is the basement named as ikuzimu, the domain of the deaths dominated by a god called Nyamunsi.³⁶⁴

The deceased, abazimu stay in the inferior world named ikuzimu. The deceased continue to be interested in the life of the survivors and make themselves present. They can appear at the moment when their descendants are not following prescriptions that they gave them before dying. In setting up sanctions, they can attack, they can make someone feel their presence, or they can provoke illnesses or disasters in the family. It is then necessary to pacify them in returning them honor to which they have a right. One can solicit their intercession when one feels attacked by other spirits. It is possible to appease them in giving them food, beer, meat or what they liked in their time alive.³⁶⁵

Rituals appear in daily life of the Rwandan; for example, after urinating, some Rwandan spit down for avoiding and escaping adversities coming from witchcraft. The important moments of rituals in the Rwandan life are “the birth, the death, the passage of the childhood to the puberty, enthronement or consecration, purification or the atonement, engagements, pregnancy time, vital communion, rituals of divinations, and pluvial rituals.”³⁶⁶ These rituals penetrate the totality of the human activities. They unite communities, reduce social tensions, solve conflicts, regenerate

362 Pascal Fossuo, Ibid, P.190,191.

363 Ibid, p.191

364 André Karamaga, Ibid, p.120, quoted A. Karamaga, DIEU au pays des mille collines, Lausanne 1988, p.17.

365 Gerard van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.18.

366 Emmanuel Byiringiro, Ibid, p.14, quoted Célestin Kiki, Le culte dans les sociétés traditionnelles africaines, Pré- thèse DETA, Yaoundé, 1994, pp.44-45.

collectivity, educate members on self-discipline and they control climatic risks, and reconcile frightening powers.³⁶⁷ To illustrate the control of climatic risks, “In 1909, the King Musinga asked the German residents of Kigali and missionaries to pray the Christian God for suspension of the fatal dryness because spirits of the Rwandan ancestors was not responding.”³⁶⁸

In practicing and believing in traditional religion, a Rwandan cannot be blamed because he understands that the universe is governed by a force and everything happens to him has a sense in life. It is this existence belief that our ancestors tried to explain in myths or in legends and to update it in cults or in traditional rituals. These practices of rituals and beliefs in spirits and in ancestors are taxed today of satanic by good disciple of colonialist and civilizing missionary,³⁶⁹ because Rwandans are more 90 percent Christians.

To justify the influence of traditional culture, the establishment of a central political regime in Rwanda wanted to modify and to transform a cemetery into a common public good place.

People felt the decision like a menace against the right of real property and against the spiritual identity, this change provoked a strong reaction of defense of the Rwandan society and its traditions, to such a point that the observance of the traditional rituals became the expression to defend the traditional popular life and to resist against the outside civil and religious authorities.³⁷⁰Nobody is allowed to touch a cemetery and a funeral place. They are respectable and sacred places but also frightening places where people can‟t cross or visit during the night.

Neglecting these places can affect and provoke consequences in the daily lives of people.

According Gerard Van‟t Spijker, “To put one leg in Christianity or in Islam and another one in a Traditional religion is interpreted by Claudine Vidal as a form of resistance against physical and economic insecurity which face peasants. It„s a defensive attitude face to their different projects which asking them for changing their life.”³⁷¹ He continues, in saying that;

367 Ibid, p.14

368 Alexandre Arnoux, Les pères blancs aux sources du nil, Librairie Missionnaire 26, Rue vavin, Paris 6o, 1950, p.58.

369 Emmanuel Byiringiro, Ibid, p.11.

370 Gerard van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.128.

371 Gerard Van‟t Spijker, Ibid, quoted Claudine Vidal, 1978, p.89.

Maintaining the post-mortem rituals, explains itself the protest against the pressure of the central political and ecclesiastical régime. The peasant, despaired by the lack of perspectives for his future and for his children, become withdrawn, he prefers to join the world of the ancestral values because the fidelity to ancestors guarantees him the future.³⁷²

It is important to mention that for the Rwandan strict observation of rites and taboos, and total solidarity within the group are the best guarantee of group survival and the transmission of life to numerous descendants.³⁷³ The persistence of visiting traditional religion explains itself as an expression of defense by the population to one‟s own identity threatened by different Churches.³⁷⁴ Unfortunately, Roman Catholic Church and Protestant churches were against Traditional religion. Some new Evangelical churches in Rwanda were proud to publicly burn some traditional objects which qualified as objects of evil during their campaign of evangelization against traditional religion. This proves how churches are weakened in assisting people “in preserving their own identity.” ³⁷⁵

The trained on kubandwa cult “must avoid all shame behavior and contempt. He must always appear honest and strong to surpass ordeals and to ask for help in case of absolute necessity.”³⁷⁶ It can be seen in the way of living in the Great Lakes region where people from different ethnic groups coexisted together in harmony. A large number of Rwandans and scholars say that if Rwandans had been able to preserve the traditional religion especially the cult of kubandwa, the genocide would not have taken place in 1994. This is affirmed because;

The cult of kubandwa is supra domestic, supra ethnic, supra national, it is more universal. Its universal character confirms the wish of Ryangombe when he formulated his last words before the death that all who want kubandwa; may all Mututsi, all Muhutu and Mutwa honors me; may children, adults and old men

372 Ibid, p.181.

373 Josef Stamer, Islam and African traditional religion, <http://www.mamiwata.com/islam.html>, 21st October 2011.

374 Gerard Van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.181.

375 Ibid.

376 Emmanuel Byiringiro, Ibid, p.39.

honor me; may all listen to my command; my spirits will reign on the spirits of death as they reigned on the living beings.³⁷⁷

At the moment Christianity rejected Traditional Religion and its practices as polygamy, traditional healing, and magical practices…, Islam took its color said Cheikh Ahmadou Hampaté Ba, a renowned Malian Muslim scholar. This explains why Islam succeeded in Africa.³⁷⁸“It remains true that Islam has been more accommodating to indigenous African custom and traditions than European Christianity has been.”³⁷⁹ Ravane Mbaye, Director of Islamic Institute of Dakar, confirms the idea in stating that Islamic “marabout”³⁸⁰ in West Africa is considered as African Traditional religion. That Islam practiced in West Africa, adapted its principles with mentalities and traditional beliefs of peoples.³⁸¹